William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme
William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme FRGS FRIBA,[1] (/ˈliːvə/, /ˈliːvəhjuːm/; from 19 September 1851 – 7 May 1925) was an English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician. Educated at a small private school until the age of nine, then at church schools, he joined his father's wholesale grocery business in Bolton at the age of fifteen. Following an apprenticeship and a series of appointments in the family business, which he successfully expanded, he began manufacturing Sunlight Soap, building a substantial business empire with many well-known brands such as Lux and Lifebuoy. In 1886, together with his brother, James, he established Lever Brothers, which was one of the first companies to manufacture soap from vegetable oils, and which is now part of the British multinational Unilever. In politics, Lever briefly sat as a Liberal MP for Wirral and later, as Lord Leverhulme, in the House of Lords as a Peer. He was an advocate for expansion of the British Empire, particularly in Africa and Asia, which supplied palm oil, a key ingredient in Lever's product line. His firm had become associated with activities in the Belgian Congo by 1911.[2][3][4]
For his son, see William Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme.
The Viscount Leverhulme
Joseph Hoult
Gershom Stewart
7 May 1925 (aged 73)
Hampstead, London, England
Elizabeth Ellen Hulme
Bolton Church Institute
University of Edinburgh[1]
Industrialist, philanthropist and politician
A patron of the arts, Lever began collecting artworks in 1893 when he bought a painting by Edmund Leighton.[5] Lever's rival in the soap industry, A & F Pears, had taken the lead in using art for marketing by buying paintings such as Bubbles by John Everett Millais to promote its products. Lever's response was to acquire similarly illustrative works, and he later bought The New Frock by William Powell Frith to promote the Sunlight soap brand.[6] In 1922 he founded the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight in Cheshire which he dedicated to his late wife Elizabeth.[7]
Africa[edit]
In the early 1900s, Lever was using palm oil produced in the British West African colonies. When he found difficulties in obtaining more palm plantation concessions, he started looking elsewhere. In 1911, Lever signed a treaty with the Belgian Government to gain access to the palm oil of the Belgian Congo and opened his operation under a subsidiary of the Lever consortium named Huileries du Congo Belge (HCB) after buying a concession for 750,000 hectares (1,900,000 acres) of forest for palm oil production. The main coordinating base was established at Leverville in what was then the district of Kwango, later part of the Province of Léopoldville.
The company town of Leverville was a project born out of the shared desire of the Belgian Government and of Lever Brothers to build a 'moral' form of capitalism in Central Africa.[46] For Belgium, Lever Brothers was an ideal partner, a company hailed for the social policies it had put in place in Great Britain. For Lever, HCB was expected to become the crowning achievement of his own brand of "moral capitalism". A few months before his death, Lord Leverhulme, as he then was, wrote in a private letter that the Huileries were "a business like none other we have. Perhaps Port Sunlight comes nearest to it in social work".[47] By 1923, a Lever soap factory was built there, and by 1924 SAVCO (Savonneries Congolaises) was established.[48][3]
Lever's attitudes towards the Congolese were paternalistic and his views were much more progressive than most industrialists of the time.[11] Malcolm Hardman writes that "Lever observed and respected the intelligence and integrity of the Congolese he was allowed to meet".[49] Sir William Lever, Baronet, as he had become in December 1911, firmly believed that paid labour alongside the schools, hospitals and rations his company promised to provide would attract workers.[46] However, "the harshness and danger of the labour demanded from them, living in camps away from their homes, as well as the poor remuneration HCB offered, failed to interest them."[46]
Failing to find sufficient voluntary workers, HCB turned to the Belgian colonial authorities, a brutal regime notorious for their use of a system of travail forcé (forced labour). The Belgians were "grateful to have a partnership with an enlightened entrepreneur to help salvage their battered reputation"[47] and it allowed Lever to recruit the Congolese workforce he needed. Leverhulme's participation in this system of formalised labour has been documented by Jules Marchal, who contends that, "Leverhulme set up a private kingdom reliant on the horrific Belgian system of forced labour, a program that reduced the population of Congo by half and accounted for more deaths than the Nazi holocaust".[50] The archives show a record of Belgian administrators, missionaries and doctors protesting against the practices at the Lever plantations. Formal parliamentary investigations by the Belgian Parliament were called for by members of the Belgian Socialist Party.
The company's former Congo plantations today operate under the control of Feronia Inc, employing approximately 4,000 people, acquired by the firm in 2009.[51]
Legacy[edit]
Lever died at 73 of pneumonia at his home in Hampstead on 7 May 1925.[10] His funeral was attended by 30,000 people.[64] He is buried in the churchyard of Christ Church in Port Sunlight in what was then Cheshire, now Merseyside. He was succeeded by his son, William Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme.
Lever was a major benefactor to his native town, Bolton, where he was made a Freeman of the County Borough in 1902. In 1899, he bought Hall i' th' Wood, one time home of Samuel Crompton, and restored it as a museum for the town. He donated 360 acres (150 hectares) of land and landscaped Lever Park in Rivington in 1902. Lever was responsible for the formation of Bolton School after re-endowing Bolton Grammar School and Bolton High School for Girls in 1913. He donated the land for Bolton's largest park, Leverhulme Park, in 1914.[65] In 1920 he donated £50 to the Selborne Society campaign to purchase land in west London, as the "Gilbert White Memorial" - it is now known as the Perivale Wood Local Nature Reserve.[66]
Lever endowed a school of tropical medicine at Liverpool University, gave Lancaster House in London to the British nation and endowed the Leverhulme Trust set up to provide funding for education and research, the trust in 2017 became benefactor to Rivington and Blackrod High School and Harper Green School, both becoming Leverhulme Church of England Academies in Bolton. The garden of his former London residence 'The Hill' in Hampstead, designed by Thomas Mawson, is open to the public[67] and has been renamed Inverforth House.[68] A blue plaque at Inverforth House commemorating Lever was unveiled by his great-granddaughter, Jane Heber-Percy, in 2002.[69]
Lever built many houses in Thornton Hough which became a model village comparable to Port Sunlight[70] and in 1906 built Saint George's United Reformed Church.[71] The Lady Lever Art Gallery opened in 1922 and is in the Port Sunlight conservation area. In 1915 Lever acquired a painting entitled Suspense by Charles Burton Barber. The painting was previously owned by his competitor, A & F Pears, who used paintings such as Bubbles by John Everett Millais to promote its products.[5]
In literature and popular culture[edit]
Lord Leverhulme's Hebridean venture was satirised by Neil Munro in his Erchie MacPherson story "The Coal Famine", first published in the Glasgow Evening News of 12th January 1920.[72]